While a family reunion is highly unlikely, Australian and European astronomers are still trying to find our Sun’s long-lost solar siblings which are now scattered throughout the sky.

To do so, the scientists examined the of some 350,000 stars in the Milky Way – as though they were mapping each star’s DNA.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this delightful view of the crowded stellar encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled region of space known as a globular cluster. (NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope)

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this delightful view of the crowded stellar encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled region of space known as a globular cluster. (NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope)

The sun was born in a cluster of thousands of sibling stars about 4.5 billion years ago.

“This survey allows us to trace the ancestry of stars, showing astronomers how the Universe went from having only hydrogen and helium – just after the Big Bang – to being filled with all the elements we have here on Earth that are necessary for life,” said Professor Martin Asplund from the Australian National University in a press release.

The star mapping is part of an ongoing survey called GALAH or Galactic Archaeology with HERMES, which began in 2013.

HERMES is the name of the spectrograph that’s being used to determine the stars chemical makeup.

Sarah Martell, from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, who leads the GALAH survey observations, explained every star in the Sun’s birth cluster will have the same chemical composition.